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Dev Blog 20
Battlestar Galactica Online - Development Blog 20 - The Capital Class 27 June 2014 Hey pilots, This is Tobias_BP and I’d like to talk with you about the long discussed Carrier Update today. It’s quite a huge topic for us as it wasn’t just redesigning one ship; it’s redesigning a whole class and also setting new directions for further ship roles. Currently the carrier isn’t really unique as the systems have shared stats with line ships. Our goal was, to create a distinct role for this ship without releasing something that replaces the job of line ships. The capital class shouldn’t replace line ships. Therefore it’s important not to scale up all stats. The Surtur and Brimir will be supportive capital ships with a power-focused gameplay. That’s why the whole item load out is mostly focused on defensive and supportive functions. Today’s topics are: *New Slots & Abilities *Refund Plan & Item exchange *Pricing Adjustments *Overhauled Asteroid Collision *Overhauled Jump Transponder System 'New Slots & Abilities' As Javery_BP mentioned in his last blog posts the new ships will have more specified slot layouts. So the new carrier will be introduced as the first ship with defensive slots. Those will be the slots for point defense and flak weaponry. Besides distinct gun and launcher slots there will be also the new role ability slot. The role ability for this capital ship is called “Outpost Mode”. It will transit your ship into an unmovable, heavy-armored “fortress”. All ships within the carrier’s faction can then use the carrier as an FTL Jump beacon which will be helpful to coordinate groups better and guard the carrier against attacking enemies. Other new equipment the carrier will receive is new aura buffs which provide interesting bonuses to all allied ships in a generous distance. These are computers which are continually buffing and draining power when active. But there are also weaknesses within a distinct role. For Brimir and Surtur this will be the offensive part. They have pretty limited and narrow long-range offensive capacities. The long-range weaponry is supposed to “control” the battlefield within a certain area, but won’t help the carrier against an attacking squadron. With this update, it’s also time for an advanced version for these two ships. This will grant as usual additional slots as well as some adjustments to the basic ship stats. It will also provide access to the exclusive new carrier paints “Hades” and “Colossus”. 'Refund Plan & Item exchange' Now, some of you might have concerns what’s happening with their existing carriers, slots and systems. All systems will be shifted to your hold, so the slots on the carrier can be exchanged with the new ones. Additionally all systems that are not part of the new carrier item design will be refunded accordingly, so you can rebuy your progress on new carrier items. Systems that are still in place or slightly rebalanced will be exchanged with the new equivalent systems at the same upgrade level. 'Pricing Adjustments' You’ll notice soon that we’ve changed the item pricing. There have been a couple of changes to the in-game economy which were not considered in item pricing. According to this we’ve raised the Tylium purchase prices of all capital items. On the other side we’ve changed the individual upgrading costs from carrier items to a general “mechanic fee” which means you pay the crew for the upgrade process instead of individual material costs. In total this will lead to down-trending upgrade costs. 'Overhauled Asteroid Collision' We’ve also adjusted the collision between big ships and asteroids. All player-guided line and capital ships will be able to fly through asteroid fields without getting stuck. Asteroids will break and cause small amount of damage to those ships. Strikes and escorts won’t be affected by this change. 'Overhauled Jump Transponder System' With this update jump transponders will work differently. Comparable to the carrier’s Outpost Mode jump transponders signals will be available to the whole fleet instead of just groups. Also the ability behavior will change – instead of being the beacon as a ship, you will drop a beacon into space which will activate itself after a small period of time. Running the activation process it already can be destroyed, but not jumped to. So players have to choose wisely when they drop a beacon and may have to defend their location till the fleet can help them. As this can be a really powerful choice and we don’t want everybody spamming beacons into space, we decided to go one small step more into the direction of the planned ship roles. Therefore the jump beacon ability will be command ship exclusive. Jump transponders will run through the same refund process as the capital items. Thank you! Last but not least we want to thank all of you, but especially carrier pilots for their support over the last years. We hope that you’ll enjoy the update to the capital class. Category:Developer Blogs